Part 3: Lyin' in Bed Just Like Steven Page Did

2/4/05:

At the risk of sounding like Stuart Smalley, I have to say that the last five weeks have been pure hell. The story is long and sordid, so I'll try to summarize it, with the help of good old trusty bullet points.

• Leaving school and moving back in with my parents in Fairfield.

• Trying to write, and finding no words other than strings of compound profanities.

• Lying in bed all day, or going through the motions with friends and family.

• Seeking out didactic songs about sadness in hopes that one of them might have The Answer. Becoming angry at R.E.M. for releasing "Everybody Hurts" unfinished like that. "'Hold on'? That's all you've got for me? I wanted The Answer!"

• Having a total nervous breakdown en route to a guitar lesson, and subsequently coming forward to my parents, which lead to two weeks in a limbo of clinics and insurance.

• Upon admitting myself to the local psych ward, hearing the nurse say: "These feelings are very common. But it's okay to not have the meaning of life figured out at nineteen. Some people never figure it out." Refraining from telling her that I already knew this, and that it made me impossibly sad.

• Spending six days in the ward, where the food was terrible (and yet insufficient; I lost five pounds), the showers had two settings (Too Hot and Off), and there was little to do other than read and watch Richard Simmons videos in the day room.

• Returning home, armed with perscriptions.

Okay, you get the picture. I'm sorry that the preceding summary is bereft of my usual wry interjection, but when I said "pure hell," I meant pure hell.

2/19/05:

Could that old trope about it always being darkest before the dawn really be true? I can't help but wonder, because the last two weeks have been absolutely amazing.

Man oh man. Too much good stuff. Where to start?

Okay: first of all, I've changed my theory of why I plunged into my depressive episode in the first place. To explain why, I should back up a little bit.

So as part of my treatment, three days a week I go to this group where we talk about feelings 'n' stuff. One day last week, one of the group members, a huge angry guy with a ponytail, was complaining about how much Fairfield sucks and how he just wants to get out as soon as possible. This prompted one of the counselors to introduce the concept of "geographical cure"—the flawed idea some people have that "if I just move to __________, everything will solve itself."

Here's the thing. I don't think my life will improve a hundredfold if I move back to the city; I know it. To explain why, I should back up a little bit.

So, okay: I've always been a real city snob. I was born in San Francisco and lived there with my family until 1999, when we had to move out to the suburbs because a) the city was getting ridiculously expensive to live in, and b) my dad wanted to be closer to his Fairfield workplace. I wasn't at all happy that we would have to leave San Francisco—it was, I sensed even then where I was meant to be—but since the move was inevitable, I wrangled a compromise out of my parents: I would at least get to go to school in the city. I had just gotten into Leadership High, a hip new charter school in the heart of downtown, and I was going there.

We moved into our new home in Fairfield the week I started ninth grade at Leadership. The commute was nightmarish, but I loved it: I got to get up before dawn, take a cab and a bus to the ferry building, then take the ferry—the VALLEJO FERRY, for God's sake!—across the bay and into the city. To my classmates, teachers, and fellow commuters, I was an enigmatic novelty: an amiable fourteen-year-old kid volunteering for the everyday grind of a haggard forty-year-old businessman. Most doubted that I'd be able to keep it up for four years. But in spite of Leadership's at-times-overwrought "progressive" nature (case in point: our options for P.E. were limited to yoga and Bolivian dance), I liked the school a great deal, and stuck it out till graduation.

The thing is, I had never really thought of Fairfield as my home. I never went out at night and I never made any friends. Because my life revolved around school for those four years, my mindset was not "I live in Fairfield" but "I live in San Francisco; Fairfield is where I eat and sleep." So recently, when I found myself back in my old bedroom,I was faced with the terrifying notion that Fairfield was suddenly "where I live." And that, I think, is what triggered the depression.

Okay. Fast-forward to last week. I explained all this to the counselors, and they said I was an exception to the rule! They encouraged my geographical cure! Boo-ya!

Lastly: I'm off to the city in about 45 minutes. My Minnesota-dwelling cousin Matt is scheduled to arrive for a weeklong visit early Monday morning, and it should be off the proverbial chain.

2/27/05:

Earlier this evening a bunch of us Doyles were watching the Oscars. At one point, my dad said, "I suppose The Passion of the Christ could ALSO be called A Series of Unfortunate Events." I consider this an early frontrunner for Quip of the Year.

3/1/05:

Matt's visit went off with nary a hitch. We spent a day and a half chillin' in San Francisco, hittin' up all the happenin' spots (Amoeba, 826, Ocean Beach, Golden Gate Park, etc.), and that was a lot of fun. Then we took the bus up to Fairfield, where we spent most of the rest of the week. Our time in Fairfield was largely uneventful, but in a good way: "relaxing uneventful" rather than "boring uneventful." Matt introduced me to trippy anime music; in turn, I introduced him to Tofutti Cuties and Garden State and Wesley Willis. Not long before the end of his visit, we played a good old-fashioned game of Scrabble, and to paraphrase the late great Mr. Willis, I wupped Mattman's ass.

At any rate, Matt and I were both looking to "get away from it all" for a while (he was on the rebound from an unpleasant breakup, and I was still coming down from my little quarter-life crisis), and in the end, we both found the visit highly invigorating. Okay. Party. Bonus.

3/25/05:

Hey, how's this for neurotic? Okay: historically, men on my dad's side of the family are relatively short-lived—we're talking an average of around 60 here. I've gathered that it's a combination of genetic factors: depression,anxiety, heart problems, fattening Midwestern cuisine, and Catholicism.

So anyway, my dad's dad, Leonard Doyle, died of a heart attack at 56. My dad turned 56 on February 12th, and spent the weeks leading up to his birthday in a terrible funk. He was certain that he was doomed to repeat the Curse of the Doyle Male.

Finally the day arrived, and my mom and I hoped he would be in good spirits for the little celebration we had planned. He got off work, we took him out to the restaurant, and to our great surprise, he was in a fantastic mood. He ate, he drank, he laughed, he sang—it was a little disturbing, really, how much he enjoyed himself. But my mom and I chalked it up to the simple fact that he had gotten "over the hump."

Not so fast.

Leonard Doyle died at the age of 56 years and 96 days. Accordingly, my dad is now obsessed with surviving past May 20th, at which point he will have outlived his father to the day. I kid you not.

3/31/05:

One of the things I'd forgotten about our apartment complex in Fairfield is how universally horrible the other residents' taste in music is. With the advent of warmer weather, my parents and I face the perennial dilemma: leave the windows closed and swelter, or open the windows and be bombarded by an auditory crapfest? Crunk, Destiny's Child, mariachi, crunk, Destiny's Child, Avril, crunk, and Destiny's Child—it's all here, all at once. I wish the dysfunctional lunatics across the yard who have subjected us to two straight weeks of Beyoncé barking "WHERE THEY AT WHERE THEY AT" would just go back to screaming at each other. It was much more pleasing to the ears.

4/6/05:

Last night I went to Berkeley to make trivial contributions to the new Squelch and catch up with Adam and Luke. Yeah, I know—I wasn't particularly dying to see Luke, but I figured that since I bailed on my roommates without so much as a note of explanation, I should at least visit them once before the end of the year, so as not to come off as a total jerk.

As it turned out, Adam wasn't around when I dropped by; it was just Luke and my replacement, a punk rocker named Jasper who couldn't have said more than five words over the course of my two-hour visit.

I have to say, Luke earned some coolness points. He bought me dinner, encouraged my post-college plans (vague as they are), and asked me to play him a few songs on my Taylor. I guess that in the end, Luke's not such a bad guy—he's just IMPOSSIBLE to live with.

4/12/05:

Today I "graduated" from my feelings-'n'-stuff group. (My gut feeling is that the counselors would have sprung me earlier, but they liked having someone in the group who could bring in a guitar and play novelty covers.) I can't be certain what the future will hold for my mental health, but it sure feels good knowing that I have a team of well-wishers backing me up.

4/16/05:

Yet another reason for me to get out of Fairfield ASAFP: Spring has sprung with a vengeance. As a pale Irish-American überwimp, I am unable to function at all when the temperature exceeds 75 degrees. I just collapse into a sweaty, disoriented, mosquito-bitten blob. This is not comic exaggeration.

5/6/05:

Over the last couple weeks I've gotten really into Jelly Bellies, and why shouldn't I? Other than the library, the Jelly Belly factory is Fairfield's only landmark worth visiting, and I like to think that my happily devouring bean after bean is a small gesture of civic pride in a town that merits very little.

However, I have a minor problem. Eighteen of the twenty flavors in the "20 Flavors" package are good or great. One, coconut, is tolerable. The twentieth is buttered popcorn. And as we all know, the buttered popcorn Jelly Belly is the most ghastly candy on the face of the earth.

So I have to be careful when expressing my civic pride.

Eamon Doyle